May 15, 2008--Mister Softee Goes To War

Almost as contentious as the battles that raged on the stoops of Brooklyn about which baseball team had the best center fielder--the Giants with the Say-Hey-Kid Willy Mays patrolling the vast expanse of the Polo Grounds; the Dodgers' Duke Snider who lofted many a mighty home run blast over the towering right field wall out onto Bedford Avenue where kids like me who couldn't afford a ticket fought with each other to collect the souvenir; or the Mick, Mickey Mantle who as a switch hitter swatted homers from both sides of Yankee Stadium's plate--almost as heated as these baseball battles were the arguments about who sold the best ice cream:

Was it Bungalow Bar whose trucks in the shape of a brown-roofed bungalow replete with faux chimney plied my East Flatbush neighborhood from April through October, offering for a nickel treats such as a chocolate-covered pistachio ice cream bar or vanilla ice cream sandwich which on a hot day had to be gobbled down before it melted and the ice cream ran down your arm or plopped onto the sidewalk; or its upscale rival, Good Humor, from which, for a dime, if you were fortunate enough to have one, you could purchase and then savor their incandescent and rarified toasted almond or chocolate éclair bars; or was it Mister Softee, which from its truck dispensed delectable soft ice cream, which for an extra five cents, could be dipped into a bath of hot chocolate which coated the ice cream and then hardened into Mister Softee's signature Brown Bonnet?nn

To give you a sense of the intensity of the ice ream rivalry, patrons of Good Humor, not content just to flash their affluence before we urchins who had to settle for the cheaper Bungalow Bars (which we contend to this day were quite superior), had a ditty that they sang as the Bungalow Bar truck crossed Church Avenue and made its slow way south to us on East 56th Street, a taunting song that mocked BB’s familiar jingle:

Bungalow Bar
Tastes like tar
Take a bite
And spit it far

No one ever claimed we were classy!

But because of our sheltered youth, we had no idea that lurking behind the veil of innocence through which at the time we saw most of reality, was a darker, Darwinian truth—Good Humor, Bungalow Bar, and Mister Softee were not just friendly rivals roaming the streets in kitschy trucks, but were often literally at each other’s throats as they fought, often violently, to protect their territories.

Today, one would expect that since Bungalow Bar no longer exists except in our rapidly blurring collective memory, and with Good Humor, though it still makes its ice cream bars, having mothballed its fleet of trucks back in 1977, and though Mister Softee still exists, because the competition thus has ended, there should no longer be any lingering territorial problems. But this is New York City, where everything is about real estate, and so think again.

Three vintage Good Humor trucks have been lovingly restored and now two are running routes in Manhattan and one can be found every day in suburban Mount Vernon, and thus it is not unexpected that these are once again contending with Mister Softee which is still thriving and can be found on many street corners all of the Big Apple.

One would think that with just two Good Humor vendors left in the city there would be room enough for all who wish to sell ice cream on the street to not get in each other’s way—it’s a big town. And that they would not, like some years ago when ice cream rivals went at each other with over-sized steel wrenches and one brawler wound up in jail for 10 years, that this sort of thing was a part of New York’s high-crime-rate past.

Well, though things between the remaining Mister Softee fleet and the two Good Humor trucks have not as yet come to blows, they are currently, as the weather warms and the schools move toward closing, flexing their muscles.

The New York Times reports that a battle is brewing up on the West Side. (Article linked below.)

One Jose Martinez, pushing around a spotless 1966 Ford Good Humor truck, has been setting himself up at the corner of 83rd and Columbus, right across from P.S. 9 and the Sarah Anderson School. Well and good—though most of the kids haven’t a clue about the history of ice cream on the streets of New York (how many know anything about any aspect of New York History)—but it seems that spot has been the turf for more than eight years for Ceasar Ruiz and his Mister Softee truck. So the struggle resumes. Peacefully thus far.

Mr. Ruiz claims that he is entitled to this spot because of his having staked it out for so long (there are no city licenses or ordinances that assign spots to ice cream trucks), and that the Good Humor man should find another location. Mr. Martinez responded, saying Ruiz “doesn’t own this spot,” and he’s just “trying to make a dollar.”

So where do we go from here? Mr. Ruiz says that he usually shows up each afternoon at 2:30, but because of the new competition he’ll set up earlier in the day. But who knows how Mr. Martinez will respond and where this will wind up. As a no-longer-innocent adult, I of course suspect the worst.

But in the meantime, I’m hoping that Bungalow Bar resurfaces since I really miss those pistachio pops. You see, I’m still a man of the people. But now they’d probable cost at least two bucks. About what a nickel used to be worth.